Are we now finding more politicians who don’t want to know what they don’t know? Are they being pandered to by a bureaucracy that’s not going to offer them new ideas, different ways of achieving their aims, or just plain tough advice that the options their ministers are pushing will not work or, more likely, have considerable collateral costs?

Sometimes it seems that way.

Good policy takes time, research, evidence is always a plus even though it may be hard to find, consideration of options, understanding how it will play out, who it will affect and judgements about the relative costs and benefits. This doesn’t always happen. Sometimes there’s a good reason for it and policy has to be ‘made on the run’. But these occasions should be the exception rather than the rule. [1]

Seasoned policy makers know that a large part of their time should be taken up with scanning the horizon, checking what is possibly coming, looking for better ways to do things, keeping up with policy developments in other jurisdictions and engaging early in the policy development process.

Many years ago, Prof Harper told a group of Victorian policy officers a story about the policy train. He said it didn’t run to any knowable timetable, often failed to stop at the station and then when it did, the stop was likely to be short and without much warning. So policy makers had to be ready, with the policies pretty much developed so they could jump on that train and drive good policy outcomes. All very true. And maybe with the way the bureaucracy is run these days, blue sky thinking and wondering what if are seen as luxuries that don’t fit with the day to day realities. If so, then we are all the poorer for it.

When government, through their ministers, asks for a policy to be developed to facilitate outcome Y, what should the policy developers do? In the absence of prior research and consultation, and sometimes simply plain lack of knowledge or understanding how to make sound policy, to develop options, many departments simply seek to provide their minister with exactly what they believe the minister wants.

Ministers sometimes have ideas about how to achieve their desired outcomes. The bureaucracy should test that approach, but also to offer other approaches and options, noting costs and benefits and the distribution of those, along the way. Policy in the broadest terms is rightly the domain of our elected representatives. But filling in the details, providing options for implementation, giving advice on costs – budgetary and more broadly – as well as ways to offset some losses for particular groups if necessary, are all the sort of thing departments can be responsible for providing options for governments to consider. Naturally, those options need to be assessed by the government who are the ultimate decision makers.

But more often than I like to recall, especially in the last 10 years or so, departments have failed to go beyond providing their minister with exactly what the minister asked for, no commentary on how well this would work, what the evidence is, or what alternatives and their implications might not be. Other times, departments might offer a similarly narrow response on the basis that they can intuit what the minister/government wants or will accept. Both these approaches are bound to lead to some poor, or at least poorly considered, policy.

So what can be done?

Well policy officers some of this is in your control. Push back against the short, narrow response. While keeping in mind the overall tenor and direction of a government, be prepared to question the prevailing ‘wisdom’ about what governments will and won’t contemplate. Offer your ministers options, be clear about cost and benefits and who wears them. Bring to their attention, especially important in an election year, what the big or emerging issues are and how government might frame their responses to them. Be smart about how options and arguments are presented. There’s no point in framing these things in a way that will unnecessarily alarm the reader – make the options play to the policy’s strengths. Engage, influence and provide solid and complete advice. Look for evidence. And don’t forget to build in evaluation to your policy. That’s an excellent source of data for the future too. More about that in another blog.

 

[1] Recent work undertaken by the newDemocracy Foundation presents some interesting case studies on some of the policy decisions of government, both federal and state, and concludes that things could certainly be done better. https://www.dev.newdemocracy.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Evidence-Based-Policy-Research-Project-Media-Statement.pdf (Accessed 6 October 2018).